I just created a profile under the freelance writer’s directory, and I just had a quick suggestion. Why not include head shots next to the names? I realize this might be really hard to do on the techy side of things if your page doesn’t allow for it, but it’s just a thought. That way people looking through the directory might notice people they already recognize.

The only problem there is that I don’t require registration for someone to be able to post their writer profile. That’s optional, although it gives them the benefit of being able to edit the profile later. So it would either have to be able to pull from their Gravatar data from their email address (which isn’t meant to be publicly viewable unless they also add it to the contact section — so some might consider it an issue of privacy), or they would have to be allowed to upload avatars. And I’m not comfortable allowing non-members to have upload access to the site. With those permissions, even if only intended for images, I’d run the risk of hackers finding ways to upload other material like malicious scripts.

That said, the plugin I use to run the directory does allow uploads. So I’ll take a closer look at its functionality this weekend. I have to run a big update on that and a couple of other plugins anyway (the updates seem to be coming in frequent waves lately). So let me review the capability and any changes recently made, and I’ll see if there’s a way I can do that without granting upload access to non-members. 🙂

Well, that was much easier than I expected it to be. Avatars are now added to the writer directory. There are small versions in the table, and larger versions in the individual profiles (couldn’t go too large as some folks had pretty low-res versions in Gravatar because they probably weren’t anticipating them being pulled in a larger format).